Friday, July 08, 2005
CHOICES FEW
Mark Steyn on Britain’s options:
The choice for Britons now is whether they wish to be Australians post-Bali or Spaniards post-Madrid. That shouldn’t be a tough call.
Not for your average Brit, certainly; they’re already back at work and in pubs and sending me emails mocking Australia’s latest cricket defeat. But, as Steyn points out, “if the governing class goes about business as usual, that’s not a stiff upper lip but a death wish.” To the enemy, after all, business as usual means killing as many of us as possible. Amir Taheri:
Sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.
David T. at Harry’s Place has more on this, in a letter to an appeasenik friend:
Perhaps you think that Islamism is the same thing as Islam. Perhaps you think that it is some form of national liberation struggle, or a reaction against imperialism or Bush’s failure to sign up to Kyoto.
It is not.
Some fine reading there. Hit them links.
UPDATE. Editorial in The Spectator:
Yesterday’s disgusting attack on London will naturally be seized upon by politicians of all hues to advance their various agendas. Opponents of the war in Iraq have lost no time in blaming Tony Blair and British engagement for the bombs that hit London and killed dozen and injured many hundreds. They have a point. As the Butler report revealed, the Government was explicitly warned before the Iraq war that our involvement would exacerbate the risk of terrorism in this country. But that does not for one moment mean that if Britain had not been involved in Iraq, then London would have been safe. It bears repeating that more British people died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre than in yesterday’s brutal outrages, and it must never be forgotten that 9/11 preceded the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, as did the series of vicious Islamicist bombings in Paris in the 1990s ...
A survivor of yesterday’s bombings has something to say on the subject.
(Via Tim Worstall)